ped

…but I’m happy you’re all as excited as I am 🥰

I don’t remember any of you lot paying for it 😂

Love it thanks for the update Andy 👍🏼 I hope your finger was insured and no I’m not liable

Little details like this are why I wanted you to work on the bass looks great

Is anything else different? I find that when I open the app I need to select the transmitter if I haven’t used them in a while (everything connects and works perfectly without opening the app of course)

Is it going to be a late night? 😂 More info on the pickups here https://www.geminipickups.co.uk/bass The owner was really helpful and I had fun discussing options with him. I also considered Mojo Pickups but their lead time was 40 days at least and frankly they didn’t seem very helpful via email

Close, in some ways. How are you getting on with that bass btw?

Sorry Si I missed this comment. Yeah kind of. When searching for inspiration I came across his Musicmaster and like what he’s done with it. I was tempted to copy his stacked vol/tone setup but I like what I’ve got now, balance and no-load tone. And I can keep the original knobs. And for some odd reason I don’t like stacked knobs. It’s my burden to bear.

I haven’t compared the spacing to a reissue mustang with a j pickup but it looks a bit wider. Remember the PJ reissues have a regular BBOT bridge so it looks closer on mine because it has the proper big bridge. However when looking for new pickups I wanted to keep something right up against the bridge because the hole will need filling anyway and I generally like wider spaced pickups. I can only guess why the original mod was done like that - quite unusual to have cut out the pickup ears in the bridge itself.

When Leo left Fender he took all the rulers with him

I've decided to have a couple of really interesting pickups added in place of the P/J. Partly because: - Putting an original pickup in will mean a new pick guard (boo) - The J will leave a big hole that'll be impossible to hide; even moving the J pickup might leave an untidy edge so I thought a different pickup to fill that gap which may or may not either fill it or maybe require a bezel would work - The bass has already been modded and will never be 'original' and I don't care about originality much anyway - The bass plays wonderfully and feels amazing, but I could quite easily buy an 'original' if that was the aim - in fact I have a Squire CV Mustang which probably sounds 99% the same as a Fender version (really it's very nicely put together for £300! - The pickups I have chosen are super cool and two pickups in a Mustang sound awesome I'll leave both tug bars if there's room next to the new pickup (which I'll let Andy reveal in good time) - they've been on so long they've stained the pick guard and actually I quite like using them in different ways.

Following, this ped guy sound like an idiot!

Hm I haven’t but not sure I’ll bother as I’m unlikely to use the pedal. I was hoping you’d be able to assign whet the two buttons on the right ear cup do instead of them being up/down patches. Maybe next time!

I’ve spent the last few weeks comparing the Mutron III with the EHX Qtron. I’ve also just bought a Maxon AF9 which has the same controls (and importantly the ‘high range’ setting which I really like) to compare also. I think the MXR M87 is perfectly good enough for a pedal to take out of the house as each of the others are either massive or require a certain power supply or quite valuable. Maybe the Maxon will be the best mix of everything, guess I’ll find out!

5

Don’t know, really. I saw the ‘how many do you own’ thread and just wondered what we had in total!

The T-Rex Bass Juice is worth a look. It does a nice distortion which gets more fuzzy as you increase the gain. The boost works as a clean boost if you turn the mix to just clean. There’s one on here for £50 or something.

Let’s put ‘ish’ at the end 😂

Add your number to the previous total. I’ll start: 5

Yeah I' love to see what else he'd bring to market if he carried on. @Cosmo Valdemar yeah sure I'll definitely record something in the next week or so. I always like to record a new bass to compare how it sounds from a third person pov! I think that teal/mirror bass was sold on here actually a while back. I agree that the scratch plate really suits the bass. The series II are far more common and have a slightly fatter body and some interesting finishes. I think they're the same electronically, except the Roger Glover sig, and the latter ones have Delano pickups instead of the Benedetti single coils, which I have always thought are fantastic in every bass I've had with them - and as far as I know unique to Vigier (although I've seen traditional P and J Benedetti pickups in basses by other small builders in Europe) The hum cancelling in this bass is pretty useful actually. Rather than having stacked single coil pickups, the hum eliminator works so that even when panning between pickups there's no difference in noise. That means is's hard to tell when the pickups are exactly 50/50 but also means you can use each individually with no buzz.

Now I’ve had it a few days and really got to ‘know’ it I’m super happy with the bass. The action is ridiculous - I like a super low G string and this goes so low that there’s barely any gap, with no untoward rattle or choking. The neck is really thin front to back (one advantage of having no truss rod) and the bass is super light. Sounds wise, the pickups are 60s spacing but the neck sounds really similar to a full graphite construction it lends a delicious top end and snap to the sound. I’ve had the 10/90 before in a five string passion but I’m not really a five player so I didn’t have that long. I think the bass is actually a perfect blend of elements from my favourite basses over the years (this is my 31st, not much in comparison to some of you!) I’ll take some decent pics later.

Peavey millennium?

Just landed - I've been after a black and maple one for ages but the series 1 (with scratch plate) versions are quite hard to find compared to the series 2 models. I ordered a custom scratch plate from TinyTone who were great and pretty quick too. BC member @wright/watt had a spare excess plate which he kindly sent me so it was used as a template. The black plate arrived the same day as the bass! The bass is really interesting and I can see how Vigier have taken their idiosyncratic left of field approach to a bass which is more traditional in terms of shape and feel. It still has those Vigier staple touches such as the supercar shape, unique electronics and graphite 10/90 neck without a truss rod. As soon as it arrived I took the strings off (it's been a while since I've had a quick release bridge on anything so that was easy) and gave it a clean, changed the plate (bit of a mission given how the pickups are attached to the plate using bolts) and knobs. Chucked some Elixir 40-95s on it (the 10/90 neck is designed to be dead straight with this gauge string) and I've been getting to know it this afternoon. First of al lit's very light. Seller said 3.3kgs which I can believe. It's made from two pieces of ash with a very thin coat of paint - the grain texture is visible below. The neck has a satin feel and having settled after its ride here it's got almost zero relief. The pickups are two Benedetti single coils which I'm quite familiar with, having had them in various versions in a number of Vigier instruments. They can be a little noisy, so here there's a hum cancelling circuit which is adjustable through a hole in the scratch plate. It works pretty well, and hum is vastly reduced and consistent throughout the pickup pan range. Since installing a mesh router in my office I can get hum at certain angles but generally it's quieter than a standard jazz bass, certainly with the pickups soloed. The controls are vol, pan, bass +/- 10db and treble +/- 10db. Weirdly the controls aren't centre dented which threw me at first. Honestly there's so much sizzle onto I find a neutral setting is bass on 0 and treble on -10. With pickups roughly centred there's a 60s spacing jazz bass with a bit more bite and a thoroughly growly bottom end. The highs are a little more focused and less 'open' than my Celinder, and my fave found is slight front pickup bias which gives a nice Rickenbacker style clank. I think the front pickup might need to go a little lower, but owing to the design I will have to use some washers behind the bolts - that'll mean removing the pick guard screws again which I can't face this evening! The bridge is nice, a little tarnished (actually the whole bass has marks, bumps and wear on it which I really don't mind) with an interesting system - intonation is a bit of a faff because you have to move the saddle with the string slackened and it's tricky to get right. There’s no saddle screw/spring which looks nice though. Once set everything bolts into place nice and securely. What else to say.. well what was nice was that I emailed Patrice Vigier a while back asking about the Excess range (I've never had one despite being a vigier fam for 20 odd years) and took the opportunity to congratulate him on his retirement. He said 'It's all been possible because of musicians like you' which I thought was nice. Good vibes. Just some quick snaps for now!